Mi Tigre, My Lover

June 25th - July 9th, 2011
at 306 17th St. (between 5th and 6th Ave), South Slope, Brooklyn

Opening Reception: June 25th, 7-10PM
Play by Dramahound Productions: June 25th, 7:30 PM and 8:30 PM

Open Source is proud to announce its first show in our new space. Mi Tigre, My Lover, is a multi-media installation by Naoe Suzuki, originating from a series of Naoe’s paintings, with the related play by Anne Phelan of Dramahound Productions. Phelan’s play, of the same name as Suzuki’s paintings, was inspired by the paintings and uses them as a backdrop for her production. This is the third play at Open Source Gallery by Dramahound Productions and we are very excited to host the fusion of painting and live theater by these two talented artists.

Suzuki’s paintings were inspired by “The Final Confession of Mabel Stark” by Robert Hough, a novel based on a true story of a renowned female tiger trainer in the early 1900s, the golden age of the circus.

Mabel’s life was certainly a tumultuous one. In 1909, Hough writes, she joined the circus as a sideshow dancer, leaving her short career as a nurse. She then married a rich man from Texas only to leave him a few months later to join the Cosmopolitan Amusement Company as a cooch dancer. It was not long before she had her own cat act, with a pair of both lions and tigers, with the Al G. Barnes Circus.

By the early twenties, Mabel’s wrestling tiger act became the best-known cat act in the American Circus. In the novel she also raised a tiger cub into adulthood–her favorite tiger, Rajah. She bottled-fed Rajah and let him sleep with her in her bed. Although having been mauled several times during her career, Mabel kept returning to the tigers’ cage time and time again.

In her artist’s statement Suzuki states:
“It was this ‘love affairs’ aspect of her relationships with tigers that fascinated me, as well as her wild career and private life. In Mi Tigre, My Lover, there’s a complex play of love/power relationship between a woman and her tiger. Obsession, control, submission, passion, tension and love filled the space between them.”

Mabel Stark committed suicide on April 21, 1968. According to a show-business newspaper, she died of a heart attack at the age of seventy-nine. Having always lied about her age, Hough says, Mabel’s true age at the time of her death was actually unknown.

Despite having five husbands and surviving many severe maulings by her tigers, Mabel seemed to have preferred her tigers over her men. Mabel’s relationships with both tigers and men were no doubt complex, and it is this idiosyncrasy of Mabel’s life that fascinates Suzuki.

Dramahound Productions is thrilled to produce the first play in Open Source Gallery’s new space entitled My Tiger, My Lover, written by Anne Phelan as inspired by Naoe Suzuki’s paintings. The cast includes Cotton Wright as Mabel Stark and Jacob Grigolia- Rosenbaum as Rajah the tiger, both featured in last year’s “Deconstruction.” It will be directed by Tamara Fisch, with costumes by Sidney Shannon. Jacob has graciously volunteered to choreograph the whip violence, so we hope it will be a feast for both your eyes and ears.

The play My Tiger, My Lover will be presented on June 25th at 7:30 PM and 8:30 PM as part of the reception for Naoe Suzuki. Admission is free.
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Open Source Gallery
306 17th St. Brooklyn, NY 11215

HOURS
Wed/Thurs: 11am-3pm; Sat 3pm-7pm
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opensoucegallery.com
info [at] open-source-gallery.org
(646) 279-3969; (718) 207-9235
©2011 Open Source | 257 17th street | Brooklyn, NY 11215 |

Everyone's Gone to the Movies

My latest play is set in an American circus in the 1920s. It's called My Tiger, My Lover, which is based on a series of paintings by Naoe Suzuki (more to come about this), based on the life of tiger tamer Mabel Stark. So I've been reading, watching animal acts on Youtube and watching movies about circuses. I keep running into the technology problem- there are all these movies on VHS, but not yet available streaming or on DVD. That said, I've seen a lot of movies in the past few months.
At the Circus (1939) was much better than I remember. I used to group it in the sad, the-brothers-are-old-and-tired, post-A Night at the Opera movies. And while it's not as good as that, it's pretty good. And Groucho sings the original lyrics to Lydia the Tattooed Lady, not "When she stands the world gets littler,/When she sits, she sits on Hitler."
First, I saw The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). It's quite plodding, though the train wreck is pretty exciting. Todd Browning's Freaks (1932) never fails to impress. I first saw it in college and I must've seen it four or five times since then. And this version had special features! It turns out that Olga Baclanova, who plays Cleopatra, had been at the Moscow Art Theatre. And after that piece of work, Todd Browning didn't work much anymore. What a waste!
I hadn't seen Chaplin's The Circus (1928), a lovely movie, as good as his best. I'm not sure why it's not more popular. Nor had I seen Poppy (1936), which started as a stage vehicle for W.C. Fields (not actual circus, but a carnival). Barnum! is a film of the London production of the musical starring a very young and athletic Michael Crawford. It was directed by Joe Layton (George M!, etc.). It is remarkably dated- I was kind of stunned at how much. Or we've all absorbed and moved beyond Trevor Nunn's directing aesthetic.
The real research find for me (and I never would have known it if I hadn't watched the Special Features) was Charlie Chan at the Circus. Dreadful movie- boring and racist all at the same time. But it was shot at the winter quarters of the Al G. Barnes Circus (which by then had been bought by Ringling) in 1936, the last year that Mabel Stark was with that circus. Several of the sideshow attractions (like the giant) are on screen.
The other find was Mae West's She Done Him Wrong, which I think was Cary Grant's first leading role. West plays a lion tamer, and in the cage with the lions is her stunt double, Mabel Stark. They look somewhat similar, though Stark was slimmer and not a real blonde.